Comrades and adversaries: Yugoslav-Soviet conflict in 1948 - A reappraisal

East European Quarterly

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 97-114

  Bjelakovic, Nebojsa ^a  

^a CARLETON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

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EID: 33748727646     PISSN: 00128449     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (46)

1. Vladimir Dedijer, Tito Speaks: His Self-Portrait and Struggle with Stalin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953),
2. and Vladimir Dedijer, The Battle Stalin Lost: Memoirs of Yugoslavia, 1948-1953 (New York: Viking, 1971).
3. After 1936 the communist parties in Europe, following orders from the Komintern, started creating coalitions with Social Democratic and Socialist parties in order to counterbalance the influence of fascist movements.
4. In the Yugoslav official historiography that moment was glorified to a certain extent: "Tito in assuming the duties of the Party's top office, decided, as we well know, to place two obligations on the new leadership; the entire Party leadership would have to remain within the country, and the Party would have to be self-financing. By this decision, Tito secured the independence of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia." Edvard Kardelj, Tito and Socialist Revolution of Yugoslavia (Belgrade: Socialist Thought and Practice, 1980), p. 72.
5. For an inside look regarding YCP activity before the Second World War, see Milovan Djilas, Memoir of a Revolutionary (New York: Harcourt, 1973), especially pp. 243-390.
6. After the end of World War II the Yugoslav Army's main holiday was silently changed from December 21 (Stalin's birthday) to December 22.
7. See Fitzroy MacLean, Disputed Barricade: The Life and Times of Josip Broz-Tito, Marshal of Yugoslavia (London: Cape), p. 246.
8. For the disappointment of the partisans with the first Soviet mission, see MacLean, Disputed Barricade: The Life and Times of Josip Broz-Tito, Marshal of Yugoslavia ibid., p. 253.
9. The involvement of the Red Army troops in the liberation of Yugoslavia (which was very important at the end of 1944) is herein observed as a bilateral action; army supplies, aid and visits of military-political missions are treated as unilateral actions by Moscow.
10. For the details on and amount of military aid, see L.Ia. Gibianskii, Sovetskii Soiuz I Novaia Iugoslavia 1941-1947 (Moskva: Nauka, 1987), pp. 153-54.
11. It is interesting that Tito after that never personally visited Moscow (during the Stalin period). He always sent other members of the Politburo of the YCP, namely Kardelj and Djilas.
12. The government known as the "Tito-Subasic government" was organized in the summer of 1944 and made up of partisans and members of the royalist Yugoslav government-in-exile under pressure from Great Britain.
13. Tito accepted the participation of non-communists in his government after 1943 in order to facilitate international recognition of the partisan government as a legitimate Yugoslav government. In 1944 he reached an agreement with Churchill about the incorporation of some members of the royalist government-in-exile in the government of the new Yugoslavia.
14. According to Milovan Djilas' book, Conversation with Stalin (New York: World, 1962), p. 211, Soviet soldiers were involved in more than 200 rapes (with more than 100 deaths) and about 1,000 burglaries.
15. See Richard West, Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), p. 221.
16. See Dedijer, Tito Speaks, p. 251.
17. In 1947 only 16.8% of Yugoslav exports and 22.2% of Yugoslav imports were with the USSR (see Gibianskii, Sovetskii Soiuz, p. 150).
18. Partly because of quite arrogant behavior of the Soviet officers, and their quite luxurious lifestyles, which altogether shocked the Spartan partisan morals of Yugoslav officers. See Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo, Revolucija koja tece (Beograd: Komunist, 1971), knjiga 2, pp. 3-98.
19. Especially indicative of this was the discussion between Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo and Marshal Tolbuhin at the end of World War II; see Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo, Revolucija koja tece ibid., pp. 15-16.
20. See R.N. Markham, Tito's Imperial Communism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 275.
21. For details of the "Trieste crisis,"
22. MacLean, Trieste crisis, op. cit., pp. 302-305.
23. For example, when Yugoslav Air Defense in 1947 shot down two American military airplanes in the disputed zone on the Italian border, Belgrade was criticized by Moscow; see Leigh White, Balkan Caesar, pp. 147-48.
24. Dedijer, Tito Speaks, pp. 314-15.
25. At the end of 1947 the Albanians in effect proposed the merger of the Albanian and Yugoslav militaries; see Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo, Tito Speaks, pp. op. cit., knjiga 2, p. 45.
26. The famous division of the Balkans, proposed by Churchill and accepted by Stalin in 1944 in Moscow, accorded percentages of superpower influence (the USSR's stake in Romania was 90%, in Bulgaria 75%, in Yugoslavia 50%, in Hungary 50%, and in Greece 10%; the rest was Britain's share); see Winston Churchill, The Second World War (Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953), Vol. 6, p. 227.
27. As was mentioned on several occasions by Djilas in his book, Conversations with Stalin.
28. "The United Nations Commission of Investigation on May 27, 1947, made its report on the clashes along the northern border. The commission did not find that foreign nationals were actually involved in the fighting but did indeed conclude that Yugoslavia and, to a lesser extent, Albania and Bulgaria had trained, recruited and dispatched refugees from Greece for action in guerrilla units there, and supplied them with arms, clothing, supplies, transport, guides and hospitalization and provided a place of escape for guerrillas fleeing from the Greek government forces." - John R. One, Foreign Policy Making in Times of Crisis (Columbia: Ohio State University Press, 1982), p. 172.
29. This echoes Moscow's dogmatic imposition of Bolshevik experience on other revolutionary movements.
30. See Peter J. Stavrakis, Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944-1949 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 207.
31. "According to Kennan's analysis of the problem, what the United States could do to improve the military situation in Greece was to increase its military presence in other countries in the area. This would force the Soviets to choose between their own national security and the spread of their ideology. Consistent with his theory on the sources of Soviet conduct, Kennan predicted that under those circumstances the leaders in the Kremlin would proceed cautiously. In fact, Kennan argued that the failure of the Soviets to recognize the Free Greek government might have been the result of the expanded US naval presence in the Mediterranean." - John R. One, Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944-1949 op. cit., p. 179.
32. Actually Moscow respected its agreement with the Allies, committing it, at the end of World War II to the withdrawal of its troops from Finland, Norway, Iran and the Korean Peninsula.
33. See Richard West, Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944-1949 op. cit., p. 222.
34. During his visit to Moscow Edvard Kardelj was almost forced to sign a document of foreign policy subordination. Curiously, he actually signed the document, but in the wrong place, in the place for the USSR's signature. Due to that the document was invalid, and this was realized the next day when Kardelj was on the plane returning to Yugoslavia. See Svetozar Vukmanovic Tempo, Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944-1949 op. cit., knjiga 2, p. 62.
35. They were in fact not true; Yugoslavia had effected the fastest collectivization and nationalization in all of Eastern Europe and, since 1945, the communist party had enjoyed total political control which was not the case in the "people's democracies."
36. The Central Committee expelled and arrested as Soviet spies S. Zujovic and A. Hebrang, who later committed suicides under strange conditions. Defections from the YPA (Lt. Gen. A. Jovanovic, Number Two man in the YPA, and some high officers from the Political Department of the YPA) were more individual cases than the organized result of pro-Moscow groups. However, the number of Yugoslavs who were prosecuted because of pro-Moscow feelings was for a long time a top secret, as Belgrade organized the same network of Gulag-type camps as Stalin had done during the 1930s in the USSR. The smallest Yugoslav official figure about those prosecuted (in two main prisons) was 10,000 people; and the biggest, including all prosecuted, is almost 400,000, of whom at least a few thousand were killed. For more in-depth accounts of persecuted people, see Bosko S. Vukcevich, Tito: Architect of Yugoslav Disintegration (New York: Rivercross Press, 1994), pp. 329-341.
37. See Benes Vaclav, Second Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1958), p. XII.
38. In the "White Book" presented to the UN in 1952 Yugoslavia stated that 2,000 soldiers and police officers were killed in various border incidents with its socialist neighbors.
39. In 1950 and 1952, due to miserable harvests, Yugoslavia was on the edge of starvation.
40. The London treaty of 1954 resolved border problems with Italy.
41. See David J. Dallin, Soviet Foreign Policy after Stalin (New York: Lippincot, 1961), p. 34.
42. See Benes Vaclav, Soviet Foreign Policy after Stalin op. cit., p. XVI.
43. See Veljko Micunovic, Moscow Diary (London: Chatto, 1980), p. 68.
44. "In February 1956 the Soviet Union granted Yugoslavia a loan totaling 84 million dollars. A number of Soviet engineers and technicians were to come to Yugoslavia in connection with industrial construction projects there. In January 1956, agreement was reached between Belgrade and Moscow on Soviet aid in building certain industrial units in Yugoslavia, and a Soviet credit estimated at from 110 to 120 million dollars, at 2 percent, was granted." See David J. Dallin, Moscow Diary (op. cit., p. 347.
45. See Veljko Micunovic, Moscow Diary (op. cit., p. 131.
46. See Veljko Micunovic, Moscow Diary (op. cit., p. 474.